Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to chairs and, more particularly, to lounge chairs that are capable of being folded for transportation and storage.
Background
The concept of producing furniture that can be easily transported by a distributor to effect efficient shipping costs and by a user for ease of transporting after purchase and for tucking away once in the household has become increasingly popular.
A common piece of furniture is video lounge chair used by teens, tweens and their parents to watch TV in a family room or for their older siblings to use to furnish their dorm rooms. Such chairs are preferably low to the ground having no legs, comfortable to relax in to watch the latest installment of a popular series or a new video game, and tend to affect a sense of informality.
Some video lounge chair designs are primarily geared towards comfort, whereas such concerns as space management and flexibility often escape the designer's attention. These chairs are constructed as rigid, unitary structures made from wood, bamboo and/or steel and typically are cumbersome and heavy. Accordingly, moving such chairs around in a house or shipping or transporting them is not easy. Thus, if a need exists for storing even a single lounge chair, it will occupy a substantial amount of storage space.
Other designs that do go beyond comfort and aesthetics and take into consideration such concerns as portability employ complicated structural assemblies, which may often malfunction.
Moreover, all types of chair designs are too often limited to traditional designs where chairs are disposed remain static. Static chairs have a propensity for making their occupants feel deprived of an opportunity to stir about, shift their weight, or just plain fidget. In contrast, chairs such as rocking chairs relieve at least some of that frustration.
When applied to video lounge chairs, chairs that are static limit the opportunity of the occupants to truly relax. Thus, it is preferred that the occupant has some opportunity to move when seated. Borrowing from the rocking chair, there are suggestions to employ means to allow the video lounge chair to rock. However, such chairs are notoriously difficult to enter from a standing position and easy exit from the seated portion.
Thus, there exists a need for a video lounge chair formed with a minimal number of components that are foldable to assume a structure, which is easily transportable and occupies a small amount of space. Another need exist for the lounge chair that has an ergonomically configured and stable structure.
A further need exists for the video lounge chair provided with a coupling unit for converting the erected position of the lounge chair to the collapsed or folded position thereof, and conversely in a simple and time-efficient manner.
Another need exists for the video lounge chair to be relaxing and entertaining.
Yet a further need exists for the video lounge chair to be easy to enter from a standing position and easy to exit from a seated position. A need exists for the structure of the video lounge chair to accommodate such desires.